Top 5 Female Characters

This one was another hard one. And I’m sure as soon as it posts I’m going to think of like 12 more characters I should have considered for the list. But oh well. Commit to it and go on! Here we go!!!!

5. Kira Walker, Partials Sequence by Dan Wells

On the surface Kira might seem like your typical YA heroine. Post-apocalyptic landscape, love triangle, hidden secrets, governments to overthrow…you know the deal. But there are a couple of things that make Kira stand out above so many of the others.

She’s smart. Kira’s training to work in medicine, hoping to stop the disease that’s been killing humanity for over a decade.

She’s smart. All those times you’re reading a book and someone feeds the main character a line and you think, “Yeah…right,” or every time the situation seems beyond fishy but the MC just takes it? Yeah, Kira doesn’t do that. She questions the things that should be questioned and doesn’t take the party line at face value. I honestly did not realize how much other characters DON’T do this until she did it.

Her best solution to friends being thrown in jail? Causing a massive riot…“Mother of mercy,”said Tovar.”And that caused the riot?”“It’s the other way around,”said Kira sheepishly.”We started the riot as a distraction for the jaibreak.”Tovar whistled.”You don’t mess around.”

4. Hadley Sullivan, The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight by Jennifer E. Smith

This is the one contemporary book on my list. I’ve talked about this book several times on this blog (and almost definitely mentioned it if we’ve ever talked in person…) The basic story is this:
Hadley was living happily with Mom and Dad. Dad goes to England for a semester to teach. Cheats on Mom. Cut ahead a few years and Dad is now marrying this former mistress. Oh, and Hadley is supposed to be a bridesmaid. So now she’s on a flight with a cute British boy, reluctantly rehashing her family’s troubled past and faced with a very real dilemma.
Mom is over the cheating, over the divorce. Dad clearly is as well. Everyone else is moving on and Hadley has to make the choice btw cutting her father out of her life completely or moving past his betrayal and accepting things as they are. Not a fantastic set of options, but Hadley handles herself in a realistic, mature way that finds me referring back to her time and again in my own life.
strength doesn’t always come in the ability to kick someone in the butt.

3. Luna Lovegood, Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling

Luna is just fantastic. She marches to her own tambourine and chooses not to get offended or hurt when others try to treat her poorly. I love little moments they gave her in the movies, like when she pulls her dad away from harassing Harry at Bill and Fleur’s wedding. She’s one of only two DA members that held on to their special coins. She just might be a bit crazy, but her kind spirit is the only reason Harry was able to talk to Rowena Ravenclaw and defeat Voldemort.
Also, she makes for a great cosplay 😛

2. Katniss Everdeen, Hunger Games Trilogy by Suzanne Collins

Because Girl. On. Fire.
Do I really need to explain why I love Katniss so much? It’s not just how amazing she is, it’s how broken she becomes. So often these characters fight the forces of evil and come away with barely a scratch in their psyche, but Katniss is one strong wind away from crumbling by the time she kills of President Snow. She was willing to give up her life for her sister. She always picked the unlikely allies, from Rue to Beetee. And man, that shouting speech she gives in the movies?!?

“If we burn, you burn with us!!!!!”

I still get chills thinking about it!

1. Allie the Outcast, Skinjacker Trilogy by Neal Shusterman

So….you’re possibly tired of me talking about this series, but too bad. I honestly almost named my daughter after this character. She’s feisty, flawed, tough, and vulnerable. She doesn’t get impressed easily and knows that those with all the answers usually made up the questions themselves. She’s a girl who’s already lost her life, but refuses to take her afterlife lying down.

And I love her for it.

So there’s my list. I changed it like 3 times while writing it. As soon as this posts I’ll think of someone else I should have used instead, but oh well. That’s my list for now. What’s yours?